The Rise of China and Chinese International Relations Scholarship

This book looks at the relationship between Chinese international relations (IR) scholarship and Chinas rise as a world power. Specifically, it addresses how Chinas rising international status since the early 1990s has shaped the countrys IR studies, and the different ways that Chinese IR scholars are interpreting that rise. The author argues that the development of IR studies in China has been influenced by Chinas past historical experiences, its recent change in status in world politics, and indigenous scholarly interpretations of both factors. Instead of treating Chinese IR scholars as value-free social scientists, the author shows how Chinese scholarsas purposive, strategic, and emotional actorstend to manipulate existing (mostly Western) IR theories to support their policy propositions and identity statements. This book represents one of few efforts to determine how local Chinese scholars are constructing IR knowledge, how they are dealing with intersections between indigenous Chinese and imported IR theory and concepts, and how Chinese scholars are analyzing their China in terms of its current rise to power.